Click on downloading 2012 only, it's very long but the interesting pages (to me) are pages 6, 7, and 41, which are the Executive Summary (we executives can't be bothered to read long stuff) and the "Accidents by vessel type" page.

Good news!! deaths down by 13% over previous year.

No surprises--operator inattention and inexperience are the leading causes, then lookout, machinery failure, speed, navrules violation, alcohol use, wake, weather/hazardous waters, in that order. Alcohol use though 7th place, was by far the leading cause of death, double the next leader.

Total deaths 651, 286 of which in from open motorboat, 58 PWC, 55 cabin motorboat, 52 canoe, 44 pontoon, then it drops off. 3 types of sailboats (auxiliary, sail only, and "unknown") combined for 27.

There may be some page in there that tells you a ratio of deaths to the type of boat, but I suspect the sailboat crowd comes in safer than the bad actors in those open motorboats......

Perhaps you could ask your insurance company. They probably look at these numbers much more carefully than anyone else.

Now, that said, there are accidents caused by recreational craft to commercial vessels that don't show in the recreational stats. I handled one such at work last year. Gulf intracoastal waterway on a Sunday in Louisiana, two oil barge (loaded!) tows strung out in front of their towboats, approaching each other with a radio-agreed meeting arrangement when three idiot water skiiers towed by an (unidentified, and not for lack of trying) idiot ski boat with an idiot PWC tagging along, all overtook one of the tows then cut in front, then had their skiiers suddenly become idiot swimmers in front of both tows.

Tows hit the brakes but this ain't Nascar, it takes a long time to stop and cocks you off your "line" too when you go emergency full astern. But it gave boats just enough time to grab their very fortunate swimmers and skedaddle, though they hung on the sidelines just long enough to see the bow-to-bow collision between the tows before bugging out. That collision aspect was fortunate since the bow rakes are the only part of those barges where there ain't oil. So no spill, but a real fender-bender. now, that would have made the commercial vessel stats but not the recreational stats. So nothing in accident stats tells you the "whole story" but this one really could have made the news and in a bad way (deaths, big oil spill) if things had gone wrong.

Anyway, hope the stats are interesting, and might provoke a discussion?

Looking out at the Wilmington bull and savannah rivers this weekend I would be hard pressed to believe it could be number of boaters going down overall. It still seems plenty crowded- of course if you used to see 35 boats a day- you aren't going to notice when it dwindles to a measly 30 a day- it will still just "feel" crowded.

The bottom line? To be statistically safe sailing all you have to do is 4 things:

1. Get 10 or so hours of some informal training on how to sail
2. Take a 40' vessel into the open ocean in rough to very rough conditions
3. Wear a pfd, don't drink, stay on the boat (regardless of make or year)
4. Sail REALLY fast

...
Total deaths 651, 286 of which in from open motorboat, 58 PWC, 55 cabin motorboat, 52 canoe, 44 pontoon, then it drops off. 3 types of sailboats (auxiliary, sail only, and "unknown") combined for 27.

There may be some page in there that tells you a ratio of deaths to the type of boat, but I suspect the sailboat crowd comes in safer than the bad actors in those open motorboats......

....

That's the relevant part, I mean what is the proportion of open motorboats to sailboats. I suppose there are a lot more open motor boats in the States but it would tale a percentage of more then 10 to one to gave an approximated number. Maybe there are.

I would be more interested to know if there are more small boats (yachts) rescues offshore now than in the past but they never detail the data and anyway it would have to be a global survey to make sense.

Statistics are tricky. Obviously there are many times more powerboats than sailboats. I have seen numbers like 13 million powerboats and 45,000 sailboats - that is like 290:1 ratio.
So if sailboat fatalities were at a ratio of 10:1 that is nothing to be happy about.

Statistics are tricky. Obviously there are many times more powerboats than sailboats. I have seen numbers like 13 million powerboats and 45,000 sailboats - that is like 290:1 ratio.
So if sailboat fatalities were at a ratio of 10:1 that is nothing to be happy about.

Statistics are very tricky!

Open powerboat trips tend to be quite brief. On a three-day powerboat weekend might spend a total of six hours in the boat pulling a skier or a tube around, whereas on a three-day sailboat weekend you might spend sixty hours in the boat.

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